Claire Needell:
NOT A BALANCING ACT

Burning Deck
71 Elmgrove Ave.
Providence RI, 02906

60 pp., $8.00

Poetry which
requires a certain amount of philosophical and linguistic
foregrounding for full appreciation. Of primary concern
is the naming process: "A car is a cave and a
hotel is a cave... giving a name to an event is a matter
of pure inference." Also, there are wry observations
on the intractability of human behavior--Needell seems
to suggest that since language is flawed, and communication
an illusion, there are limits to the civilizing and
taming force of it.--Susan Smith Nash